n exposed, remind us perhaps more
nearly of the Lombard dominion. Then came Charlemagne and his knights
and the great quarrel. But though Genoa now belonged to the Holy Roman
Empire, she was not strong enough to defend herself from the raids of
the Saracens, who in the earlier part of the tenth century burnt the
city and led half the population into captivity.

Perhaps it is to Otho that Genoa owes her first impulse towards
greatness: he gave her a sort of freedom at any rate. And immediately
after his day the Genoese began to make way against the Saracens on the
seas. You may see a relic of some passing victory in the carved Turk's
head on a house at the corner of Via di Pre and Vico dei Macellai. Nor
was this all, for about this time Genoa seized Corsica, that fatal
island which not only never gave her peace, but bred the immortal
soldier who was finally to crush her and to end her life as a free
power.

There follow the Crusades. These splendid follies have much to do with
the wealth and greatness of Genoa. It was from her port that Godfrey de
Bouillon set sail in the _Pomella_ as a pilgrim in 1095. He appears to
have been insulted at the very gate of Jerusalem, or, as some say, at
the door of the Holy Sepulchre. At any rate he returned to Europe, where
Urban II, urged by Peter the Hermit, was already half inclined to
proclaim the First Crusade. Godfrey's story seems to have decided him;
and, indeed, so moving was his tale, that the crowd who heard him cried
out urging the Pope to act, _Dieu le veult_, the famous and fatal cry
that was to lead uncounted thousands to death, and almost to widow
Europe. In Genoa the war was preached furiously and with success by the
Bishops of Gratz and Arles in S. Siro. An army of enthusiasts, monks,
beggars, soldiers, adventurers, and thieves, moved partly by the love of
Christ, partly by love of gain, gathered in Genoa. With them was
Godfrey. They sailed in 1097: they besieged Antioch and took it. Content
it might seem with this success, or fearful in that stony place of
venturing too far from the sea, the Genoese returned, not empty. For on
the way back, storm-bound perhaps in Myra, they sacked a Greek
monastery there, carrying off for their city the dust of St. John
Baptist, which to-day is still in their keeping.

Was it the hope of loot that caused Genoa in 1099 to send even a larger
company to Judaea under the great Guglielmo Embriaco, whose tower to-day
is all that is left o